Dmitry Vlasov, a PhD Student and junior scientist from Lomonosov Moscow State University, brings us this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. He shares his experience of taking part in a student scientific society expedition to Lake Baikal. This picture shows icy shores of Lake Baikal – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest natural freshwater reservoir (containing about one fifth of Ear ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Imaggeo on Mondays: Shaken, not stirred – sediment shows signs of past earthquakes
Nore Praet, a PhD student from Ghent University in Belgium, brings us this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. She sets the scene for an investigation into past earthquakes and explains how peering through a lake’s icy surface and its murky waters, and into the sediment below can help scientists find out more about the impact of earthquakes in the future… Early this year, I set off with a group of scientis ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Plate it up – a recipe for sea ice errors
Last week, a team of cryospheric scientists published a paper in The Cryosphere that showed how tiny plates of ice can lead to spurious estimates of sea ice thickness. This week, we’re featuring their findings, as well as some spectacular sea ice images in the latest in our Imaggeo on Mondays series… Viewing the poles from above is a stunning sight – a seemingly endless expanse of bril ...[Read More]
Meltwater ponds halt new sea ice growth
Each September, battered by the relentless sun-filled days of summer, the smooth expanse of the Arctic Ocean reaches the climax of its annual transformation. Replacing the endless blanket of winter ice, a vast jigsaw puzzle stretches across the pole, a mosaic of soggy snow islands floating amid turquoise ponds of meltwater and inlets of dark blue sea. These meltwater ponds have been shown to drama ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Pitter-patter of little paws in Patomsky crater
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Dmitry Demezhko, who describes how Patomsky crater may have formed and why it keeps scientists puzzling… Patomsky crater, also known as Patomskiy crater or the Patom cone, sits in the Irkutsk Region of Eastern Siberia. The site is a curious cone with a crater at the top and a small mound in the center. The cone totals some 39 metres in height and ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Moulding Malaspina’s moraines
There are many different types of glaciers, each defined by where they’re located and how they terminate. Piedmont glaciers are those that flow out from a confining valley and spill out into the open, forming wide lobes. This one is Malaspina Glacier, which spreads out over the Seward Ice Field. Stretching 45 kilometres over the lowlands towards the sea, and spanning some 65 kilometres across, Mal ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A feast of pancakes
The thought of pancake ice always makes me a little hungry – I just can’t help thinking about stacks of syrup-drowned pancakes, or crepes covered wish sugar and doused with lemon juice – but the science of pancake ice is quite a tempting topic too! Pancake ice occurs in areas where ice formation is repeatedly disturbed by water movement. In the Southern Ocean, the water extremely open and the swel ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Carving polar canyons
This week Ian Joughin, a research scientist from the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, takes us on the polar express to put glacial processes into perspective and find out what makes a moulin… This canyon formed when a melt lake on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet overflowed and created a stream that extended out toward a crevasse field. This outflow stream filled a creva ...[Read More]
Geoscience under the tree
In a festive-themed post, EGU Media and Communications Manager Bárbara Ferreira selects a plethora of geoscience-inspired Christmas presents, which you could give to your favourite researcher. Please note that, with the exception of the last one, the items listed below are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by the EGU. For me Christmas is more about eating large amounts of food and celebratin ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Hot and cold – how ash influences glacial landscapes
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Joanna Nield, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Southampton. Nield explains how volcanic eruptions can impact glaciers and how ash fall can both accelerate and slow down glacial melt… This photo was taken at Fjallsjökull, Iceland in July 2011, shortly after the eruption of Grímsvötn volcano (21 – 30 May 2011). The Gríms ...[Read More]